Trend reports consist of a time-series chart and an accompanying data table. Trend reports allow you to answer questions like:
- How has the total number of hot/cold calls changed for each of my properties over the past two years?
- How quickly are individual staff members closing out requests, and how have response times changed over time?
- How much staff time is each tenant consuming, and how have the figures changed over the past year?
Trend report attributes
You can specify up to five attributes when creating a trend report.
Time period
The time period attribute determines the date range that the chart covers. The menu consists primarily of a set of rolling time periods that end on the present day and extend a certain amount of time into the past. For example, setting the time period to “Past two weeks” will create a report that extends from 14 days back to the present day.
Rolling time periods are useful for creating saved reports that are always up to date with the most recent data. But if you are interested in looking at a fixed historical period, simply choose “Custom date range” and choose a specific start and end date.
Interval
The interval of the report allows you to adjust the granularity of the reported data. For example, if you are viewing a report that spans several years, you may find it most convenient to view activity rolled up on a monthly basis. If you’re looking at the last week of activity, on the other hand, you will probably be more interested in seeing daily statistics.
Metric
The metric attribute allows you to choose the metric being tracked over time. Currently there are four metrics you can report on:
- Request opened. The number of new requests opened in a given time period.
- Request closed. The number of requests closed in a given time period.
- Resolution time. The average amount of time between request creation and request close.
- Time logged. The amount of actual staff time spent on a request, as indicated in logged time records.
Group by
The grouping attribute lets you slice the time-series data by a secondary data variable. For example, instead of just seeing the amount of time logged across all requests, you can view the amount of time logged for each staff member, or for each activity type, or for each property. The grouping attribute is what really unleashes the power of trend reports, because it allows you to perform comparisons between groups.
Filter
Once you choose a grouping, you can also filter the results to focus on a specific group. This is a convenient way to narrow the focus of the report when you just want to see a subset of the data.